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... attorney lingo?!?!

Quick back story: stbx not accepting or declining my last offer of settlement and is dicking around on his production of documents = divorce not moving forward. So, my choice is to set for trial or dismissed without prejudice.

I want him to pay child support (he does through our temporary court orders); pay for half of the children's medical bills; pay for half of the credit cards; and set up a payment plan to pay me the money he owes me.

I receiving this email from my attorney:

Hi dmari, I have attached our first and second Rule 68 Offers of Settlement to them and their 8/22/13 second offer to us. Perhaps you can use these to formulate your position for the Motion to Set. Please email me your position on the issues in Word and I will work with you on it. A trial position is what you are requesting the Judge order at trial, not a settlement position. Thank you.

I asked him to clarify and received this:

Yes, a trial position is not a compromise position like a settlement position. [/bold

But I am still confused as to what exactly I am supposed to write up. I know my attorney said he would work with me on it but I would like have a better idea from you folks who have BTDT as to what the hell I am writing about.

Please help if you can. Thank you so much!

I've never heard of such a thing.

The best guess I have is, you are asking for the judgement you want and what the details would be, so if you want him to take 75% of credit card debt or pay child support plus extras plus medical and tuition through age 24 and or graduate from college you ask for those things where in a settlement you'd offer 50/50 split and 50/50 shared kid expenses.

This would be the most you can get from a logical perspective in the settlement. Not a lower amount that you might compromise on.

"i want the house, all the equity, 10 yrs of spousal support, full custody and a lot of child support" The most that you could conceivably justify using the law on your side.

The settlement position would be more of comporomise, eg. I want the house and will split the equity 50/50, 1 year of spousal support, and the state guideline child support based on income

Thank you for replying sparkysable (I'm glad I'm not the only one that never heard of it), betrayedfriend and hexed!

betrayedfriend and hexed: what you said makes sense. That's kind of what my understanding was.

What I don't understand is if I state what I want and it's the exact same thing as it was one year ago, what difference does it make? Why couldn't we have wrapped this up last year? Nothing has changed.

So I'm basically going to re-state what was in my initial divorce paperwork. Ugh. Well, stbx has 10 days to decide if he wants to accept my last offer of settlement. We offered it in August and he hasn't accepted or rejected. More passive aggressive bullshit. Just sit and do nothing.

If he doesn't then that will be interpreted as a rejection, then trial it is.

His "defense" is "boo hoo, I have no money". No shit sherlock. What did you think would happen in DIVORCE?

Thank you for responding and for the mini-vent!